BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - A Bismarck High School senior has swept the state chess championship every year in high school, and he will soon face off against expert players from throughout the country.
The game is a lifelong passion for Stuart Wolf, who picked up his first pawn as a toddler.
“I probably knew how to play chess before I knew how to ride a bike,” he said.
Countless games later, he won his fourth straight title in the North Dakota scholastic competition last month, the Bismarck Tribune (https://bit.ly/1Y0vwKn ) reported. He will travel to Indianapolis this summer for the GM Denker Tournament of High School Champions.
It’s not his first major tournament. He and his dad, who is president of the North Dakota Chess Association, have competed at the U.S. Open Chess Championship.
In fact, the whole family plays, including his three older sisters who competed in high school.
His mom does tech support at local competitions, running the computer and taking photos. She used to play against her son until he entered third grade.
“I stopped when he started beating me regularly,” Vicki Wolf said.
Hi dad, Todd Wolf, imparted his chess skills to his kids after he began studying the game seriously in 1990.
His wife worked in Midway School in northeast North Dakota, which had a chess club.
The students wanted to compete at a tournament in Bismarck, but their adviser could not attend. They turned to Todd Wolf, who spoke to the superintendent.
“He gave me the school station wagon and gas card, and I camped out on my parents’ floor,” he said. “I’ve been doing chess ever since.”
Todd Wolf aimed to bolster the Bismarck chess scene after attending a national tournament, where he realized North Dakota needed to up its game to be competitive. He started hosting chess camps and clubs at Bismarck elementary schools and Wachter Middle School.
“I see kids come to chess club that have no ability to focus in the classroom, and they develop the ability to focus,” he said.
This year he served as adviser to the new club at Bismarck High School, which has 20 participants.
Stuart Wolf is one of them, practicing with his classmates every Wednesday after school.
“It’s a mental battle against another person,” he said. “You have to strategically, tactically and mentally overcome them.”
Only in ninth grade did he lose focus on chess for a period of time. But as the state competition approached, he pulled out his board again to practice.
His work paid off when he won and advanced to his first Denker championship.
Half the students who compete there are considered “expert,” a ranking they have achieved based on points allotted to them for success in past tournaments.
Stuart Wolf is ranked “Class C,” which falls behind classes A and B and expert.
That doesn’t mean he cannot compete with the higher rankings. Take, for example, round one at last year’s U.S. Open.
“I played a pair of experts and somehow managed to beat both of them,” he said.
After graduation, Stuart Wolf plans to attend Northland Community and Technical College in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, to study aircraft maintenance. During the summers, he will work toward becoming certified in unmanned aerial systems.
He anticipates his lifelong hobby will help in those endeavors.
“Chess is all about overcoming adversity,” he said. “You have to have the mental strength to fight through whatever you are going through.”
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Information from: Bismarck Tribune, https://www.bismarcktribune.com
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